


The Weathering And Remembrance Of Storms

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds, Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dystopia, Gen, The 28th Amendment Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:39:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old scars sting in the rain. Set in the 28th Amendment Verse created by Bessemerprocess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weathering And Remembrance Of Storms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoochild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/gifts).



Haley Hotchner has been sentenced to death three times. It's the first time that's the shock, they say but for her it was after. After Aaron, when the third warrant came. One more pain and that's the one that makes her turn around in the safe house, to check for Jack.

She'd sent Jack away after the first warrant came, back at the beginning when she and Aaron had made lists of things to take, rather than people to save. It seems odd now, to think of packing the car, loading up a iPod for a journey, cataloguing which books could keep Jack entertained (a whole lot, as it turned out). Ordinary life - just packing up the car for a holiday.

They might almost have fooled them, actually. To this day, Haley has no idea who it was that tipped off the authorities. She prefers not to know, because there is vengeance in her heart. An anger in her skin that boils when the likely knowledge of Aaron's fate winds it way through the evidence of her eyes when she talks to other survivors.

She has never read his file, Aaron's file. But Haley knows every word, every phrase, every catalogue of injury and death from the skins and faces of those who lived. They are bruised and sometimes, she wonders if they will ever be unbruised.

-

I first saw my own face on a milk carton at the wrong time. It should have been the day after, the day perhaps when the loss of all I had worked for may have smarted that much less against the weight of what the government I had served had taken from me. It meant much more to be an FBI agent, before the subsequent days.

But it was not then that we knew we were the UNSUBS.

_Miles To Go, The Life Of David Rossi_

-

Jordan had become the spokesperson for a group who she'd never thought she'd see again but somehow, she finds herself rallying around them without entirely understanding where this instinct came from. Because sure, they can perhaps take care of each other but no-one was reminding them of how the outside world wanted answers, needed answers.

This she can spin, because there is no spin here. Just tired and weary heroes, disclaiming credit (any credit, but then Jordan knows that dance well - mostly because it scares her) and in some ways, the hardest thing was convincing them that they had a larger obligation than memory.

She goes back to Washington, after the Amendment is repelled, to build the world anew.

-

There's a reason FBI Agent Anderson became the mole for another Anderson, not so much later. It's the same reason he can never leave his job, even when they bring him news of the warrant in advance. Guilt. It's not bravery, not high ideals or even atonement. It's just that the thought of living with himself again, after having stood by is slightly greater than how scared he is of dying.

It's a slight difference, but it is a difference. That's why he joined the resistance, after he stood by and saw Aaron Hotchner hanged in a public square. There's a reason he's going through this, despite the shaking inside and out. Watching the peace on Aaron Hotchners face but also the sadness.

The sadness of a man who would never see his son grow.

-

Erin Strauss refuses a statue. They build one anyway, in the entrance foyer of the FBI academy for remembrance. She'd rather a statue of the son she lost - not Ewan at the end, teen-aged and terrified but the little boy with the puppy (the man who'd killed her son wasn't much more than a teenager either, egged on by his father and his peers).

She'd gone to die for the BAU so they could carry on. So her boys and her husband could carry on. She'd never expected to live, never wanted to carry on with her burdens. But they need to be taught, the new agents. How to bite back against authority.

Erin Strauss goes to Quantico and she is hated and loved - for who she is, for who she represents, for what she has done and for the deeds she has done.


End file.
